NO ORDER LIKELY IN CRYPTO HEARING AT INDIAN SUPREME COURT

Indian crypto industry will have to wait for more weeks or even months, before the court decide on the validity of Reserve Bank of India (RBI), as court will need more time to complete the hearing.

It has been learnt that the crypto petitions has been listed for 12 September 2018 in the Court No 9 of the Supreme Court under Justice Rohinton Fali Nariman bench.

Initially, the petitions were listed before the chief justice bench, A K Misra, but now the matter has been sent to another bench.

Speaking on this, Mohammed Danish, Crypto lawyer practicing at the Supreme Court said that because the petition was sent to the new bench, it is certain that the matter will see further adjournment, as the judge will be hearing the petitions for the first time and it is to be noted that no parties have filed their reply.

In that sense, it is very difficult for the court to pass a final order on RBI order dated 6 April 2018.

Advocate Dwaipayan Bhowmick who is one of the petitioners said that looking at the cause list, the matter will come up for hearing at around 12:30 PM tomorrow.

In April, RBI in a circular said, “It has been decided that, with immediate effect, entities regulated by the Reserve Bank shall not deal in virtual currencies (VCs) or provide services for facilitating any person or entity in dealing with or settling VCs. Such services include maintaining accounts, registering, trading, settling, clearing, giving loans against virtual tokens, accepting them as collateral, opening accounts of exchanges dealing with them and transfer / receipt of money in accounts relating to purchase/ sale of VCs.

Regulated entities which already provide such services shall exit the relationship within three months from the date of this circular, RBI added.